Disks wipes 1

[spoodie]

I've been asked to wipe some disks on some servers so the kit can be sold on, but I'm having trouble with external disk arrays: D1000 connected through an A3500FC as well as A5000 and A5200 connected using fibre. The server heads are E4500 and E5500. For the other disks/servers, such as E420s, I've been using an script which automates the format command to perform analyze passes but this obviously won't work on disks that can't been seen by the format command. The servers don't have any OS loaded, I'm booting them from Sol9 CDs. I

Any thoughts on how I can tackle this? Otherwise I have to remove the disks and wipe them in pairs in the E420s but as there's nearly 300 I would like to avoid this if possible.

Thanks

spoodie
===================
"I say we take off and nuke the entire site from orbit. That's the only way to be sure."

 

[tarn]

I'd suggest a script writing a file of zero's to fill the disks then delete the files again, this way any existing data will be overwritten and if someone tried to restore the old disk data then all they would get is a file of zero's

You are obviously aware that the "coroners toolkit" (google for it) will allow anyone to restore unix disk data "quite easy" unless it's low level formatted (or totaly overwritten)?.

Good luck
Laurie.

 

[KenCunningham]

Laurie hits the nail (and not for the first time!).

 

[daFranze]

I suggest not to use zeros but random zeros and ones, since if something is overwritten with zeros a low level data recovery is still possible (ok, someone would do this only if data is very, very interesting)

Best Regards, Franz
--
Solaris System Manager from Munich, Germany
I used to work for Sun Microsystems Support (EMEA) for 5 years

 

[spoodie]

My method of wiping the disks is already sorted, I'm using the format command and performing and "analyze" then "verify", which I'm lead to believe is a good method. My problem is that the format command cannot "see" the individual disks in the external, fibre connected disk arrays, is there any way around this?

Cheers,

spoodie
===================
"I say we take off and nuke the entire site from orbit. That's the only way to be sure."

 

[daFranze]

I've never used the A3500s but D1k and A5k Series Disks are "visible" in format, too.

Best Regards, Franz
--
Solaris System Manager from Munich, Germany
I used to work for Sun Microsystems Support (EMEA) for 5 years

 

[tarn]

You contradict yourselve here spoodie, first you say you need a way to wipe the disks as you cant see them with format then you say you have your method to wipe the disks sorted.

Its one or the other!! as for using a format to wipe disks "you'r on your own there", I'd never rely on a format for data distruction.

I will agree with daFranze, yes a random of 0's + 1's would make the job much more permenant.

If you feel comfortable using format then thats your choice, but if you want to do the job with confidence then listen to the advice that you are requesting.

Maybe your question was "how do I format disks on a disk array device" ?

Laurie.

 

[spoodie]

Okay, I concede. How do I confidently wipe the data from disks within an external disk array, or any other disks for that matter, but mainly the former? Bearing in mind I’m limited to the OS I can boot from a CDROM, is this possible?

Thanks for your help.

spoodie
===================
"I say we take off and nuke the entire site from orbit. That's the only way to be sure."

 

[daFranze]

Solaris 9 (even from CD) has a /dev/random to generate random 0s and 1s; there is dd etc. to write them on disk

# dd if=/dev/random of=/dev/rdsk/c0t0d0s2

Best Regards, Franz
--
Solaris System Manager from Munich, Germany
I used to work for Sun Microsystems Support (EMEA) for 5 years

 

[spoodie]

Okay, so how do I write these random bits to a disk the OS can't "see", the externally connected disk arrays are still my main issue? My understanding is that if they are not available from the initial format menu then the OS cannot "see" them.

Thanks

spoodie
===================
"I say we take off and nuke the entire site from orbit. That's the only way to be sure."

 

[daFranze]

how did you see these disks before? Keep them in/at these systems, create a filesystem son slice2 (or create one) and generate files till filesystem is full with above dd commands; if the OS booted from CD cannot see the disk you can't do anything with these disks (sometimes you just need a special Driver or additional Software such as RaidManager)

Best Regards, Franz
--
Solaris System Manager from Munich, Germany
I used to work for Sun Microsystems Support (EMEA) for 5 years